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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

MistyMom to Gerardo "Jay"Stillborn at 37 weeks on May 15th, 2008Crawfordville, FL

Our journey began in September of 2007 when we found out we were expecting our first child. This pregnancy was amazing to me because I had no morning sickness at all and felt great the entire time. The weekend we found out we were pregnant we immediately went out and started buying stuff. We were just so darned excited to finally start our family we couldn't wait. We told our family that weekend.

We found out around 18 weeks we were having a beautiful little boy and we were so excited. Jay already knew that his son would be named after him and his father, there was no arguing about that. So Gerardo III it is (Jay for short). Most of this pregnancy was uneventful. We found out at 28 weeks that I am a carrier for cystic fibrosis and that was a bit of a scare, but when Jay went for his test we found he was not a carrier so it became nothing.

May 14th, 2008 at 37 weeks pregnant, I wake up like normal and get ready for work. As I am getting ready I feel Jay kicking which was normal, I didn't think anything of it other than I loved feeling him move. I went on about my day, but at about noon I realized I hadn't felt him move in awhile which wasn't normal at all. So I called a good friend of mine and she told me he is probably fine just running out of room, they tend to slow down this close to their due date. So I didn't bother calling the doctor cause she was right, I was probably just being paranoid and he was just fine. But I still had a feeling something might be wrong. But I went ahead and went about the rest of the day, our first birthing class was that night and a doctors appointment was the next morning, so I figured I'd mention it at the doctor visit in the morning.

12:30am May 15th, 2008 I wake up to contractions. All I keep thinking is this isnt supposed to be happening yet, he isn't due until June 5th. But my excitement grows at the thought of him being here a few weeks early. I wake Jay up and tell him we need to go to the hospital. As he helps me out of bed I began shaking uncontrollably because I am so cold. We grab our bags and jump in the car and head to the hospital. On the way we stop at CVS and pick up a thermometer cause we think I may have a fever. I also call my mom to ask for advice or just to have Mom on the phone.

Once we get there the nurse is checking me out to see how far along I am, then starts hooking me up to all the monitors. She tells us the baby has a good heartbeat and that I am only 1cm dilated and not contracting much and that they will probably send me home in a bit. But I tell her my worries from the day and her face goes a little white and she starts checking my pulse to the heartbeat monitor and realizes that they are the same. So after about half an hour of trying to find the baby's heartbeat she calls in her supervisor who tries to find it. They then call my doctor. By this time I can feel something is wrong. They then move us to a delivery suite. No one has said anything to us about what's going on, but I already know it's the worst. My doctor has them do an Ultrasound to confirm our worst fears. There it is...right there on the ultrasound the thing I had been fearing the most, no heartbeat. My heart stopped. I could not believe just the morning before I felt him moving and everything was fine, but this morning he is just gone. I wanted to die.

The tech doing the u/s and my nurse do not say a word but keep pointing at the monitor. Which they left turned towards me and I clearly see the hole where my sons heart should be beating is nothing but a hole. My doctor comes in and confirms to us he has died and that as of yet they didn't know why, but that we could do an autopsy to find the cause. Jay and I just did not feel that we could put our sons body through that. We declined to do an autopsy but were going to have the chromosomal test done.

I begged for a c-section because the thought of going through a vaginal delivery just broke my heart even more knowing that at the end of that painful journey my son would not be coming to me alive. Well God had different plans for us, several hours later my contractions became stronger and at 8:20pm on May 15th, 2008 I delivered our precious baby Jay. Our beautiful little boy born 5-15-08 weighted 5lbs. 15oz and was 20in long. We then knew what went so wrong that took our precious son's life. Jay's umbilical cord was twisted so bad at his belly button it was the size of the tip of a pen. The doctor was surprised that it had become that twisted, and told us that this type of umbilical cord accident was so rare and that the chances of this happening again was very slim.

We only got to hold our son for a very short time and we took a few pictures. Luckily our nurses took more as they bathed him. I wish I would have been the one to bathe him, changed his clothes a hundred times, taken more pictures, held him longer and maybe even brought him home until the funeral, but I didn't and I regret that to this day.

After leaving the hospital we began researching to find out what is being done about umbilical cord accidents and we have found that as of yet only one doctor is trying his hardest to help, but he is only one man in a world where umbilical cord accidents happen more than many doctors believe. To know afterward that there were things that could have saved him is heart wrenching and painful to live with. I should be holding my son today but instead I have to accept the fact that he is gone from us. It's just not fair that babies die and leave parents feeling empty and lost and all of our questions left unanswered. WHY?? We are parents just a different type of parent, we are the parents of an Angel. We are honored yet saddened. But in time we will be with our precious son again.

1 comments:

I am so very sorry for your loss. You are the only other BLM I have "met" who's baby had the same "torsion" as my little girl had. Although they say the chances of this happening are so slim, it doesn't make me feel any better because it happened to OUR babies. Why can't we be on the other side of the odds?